Immigrants riot in Italy amid racial unrest

Thousands of immigrants protested against racism in a southern Italian town on Friday, after a night of rioting sparked by an attack on African farm workers by a gang of white youths.

Maroni, from the far-right Northern League party that is a junior partner in Silvio Berlusconi’s government, sparked controversy when he said one of the reasons for the violence was that illegal immigration had been “tolerated all these years”.

Opposition leader Pierluigi Bersani and several centre-left politicians accused Maroni of fuelling the tensions.

“Maroni is passing the buck ... we have to go to the roots of the problem: Mafia, exploitation, xenophobia and racism,” Bersani said.

Lessee…who was doing the rioting here? And under what provocation? A couple of kids with air rifles?

And yes, the answer is that illegal immigration has been tolerated there for too long.

Laurel

Italy in racism debate as migrants quit riot town

Hundreds of African immigrants have been evacuated from a southern Italian town, authorities said on Sunday, following some of the worst racial violence in Italy since World War Two.

The evacuation followed three days of clashes in the southern Calabrian town of Rosarno, which began when some local residents began attacking immigrants who responded by rioting.

At least 53 people, including 18 policeman, were injured in the unrest in the town, located in Italy’s southwestern toe.

Authorities moved more than 1,000 people, mostly illegal temporary workers from sub-Saharan Africa to immigrant centres around Italy in an operation that lasted from Saturday through to the early hours of Sunday.

Progress?

Southern Italian town world’s ‘only white town’ after ethnic cleansing

Immigrants working as crop-pickers wait to be transferred from Rosarno, Italy, after clashes with locals in some of the worst episodes of racial unrest in years. Photograph: Tony Vece/EPA

Story: Rosarno in southern Italy had, by last night, been turned into what one politician termed the world’s only entirely white town after a bloody ethnic cleansing that produced scenes reminiscent of the old American deep south.

As bulldozers got to work to obliterate shacks belonging to the itinerant crop-pickers who had fled, the last of more than 1,000 such workers were being removed from the area for their own protection.

After two days and nights of violence that began with the apparently motiveless shooting of two African workers, the number of injured stood at 53, comprising 18 police, 14 local people and 21 immigrants, eight of whom were in hospital.

The attacks on these illegal aliens with not “motiveless” a pregnant Italian woman was attacked and beaten causing her to miscarry, I am sure these illegal aliens caused a lot of other problems but this was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

When will our straws accumulate to the tipping point?